Bookmark This New Website: Retro Report

Many of this blog’s readers are news junkies. So in a slight departure from this blog’s usual content today, I’d like to suggest you bookmark a new website that debuted this week called “Retro Report.”

I really like the promise of this site, because it seeks to correct one of the biggest problems with today’s media. Too often, a story dominates the headlines for a few days and then disappears. But what happens after the story disappears? Did more information about the story emerge? Did it ever get reported? Did the original breaking news coverage get parts of the story wrong or omit a key perspective?

The first Retro Report piece takes viewers back to 1987, when “a barge loaded with New York garbage became a sensational fiasco,” but “ended up fueling the modern recycling movement.” The story was big enough for Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, and Bob Schieffer to report on at the time. Even Johnny Carson couldn’t resist cracking a joke. Here’s the story:

Publisher Taegan Goddard told me he “hopes that Retro Report can become the Wikipedia for news—the place to go to find out what happened to stories that once dominated the news.”

Comments (2)

I can picture a local version of this catching on. Growing up I recall news reports – accidents, arrests, etc – yet never hearing a peep about them later, leaving lingering questions . . . “Did they survive?” “Were they convicted?”

Granted with today’s connectivity, you might be able to google a name or locale, but I still chaff just a bit when I find myself drawn in, knowing in the back of my mind that I’ll likely never know the outcome.